Thursday, May 24, 2012

A list of educated Jews throughout history.

The amazing hebrewbooks.org has a fascinating and rare pamphlet called Reshimos Anshei Mofes published in Rausnitz in 1838 (supplied by the YIVO library, its owner was the great bibliographer Benjacob)

It's author, Joseph Flesch, intended it as a compilation of "mighty scholars, old and new, who distinguished themselves by their commentaries on the Bible, as great grammarians, Hebraists and experts in other languages ... who grasped Talmudic and various other branches of knowledge." In doing so he hoped to show the panoply of great Jewish scholars throughout the ages. Arranged alphabetically, by first name, and also chronologically - his first entry, under aleph, is Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus amd the last, under aleph, is Rabbi Abraham Geiger. He tries to list everyone he can think of. Thus, there is Ptolemy (who spearheaded the LXX, he thinks), Spinoza and Salomon Maimon, alongside various Tannaim and posekim. Each entry is accompanied with a few words or lines of biography, explaining why they are on the list. For obvious reasons, the more recent ones (18th and 19th century) are the most interesting.

Oirignally I thought it might be interesting to type out his complete list of names, only arranged chronologically. I got this far, and then thought that I have better things to do:

so instead I will list some of interesting people he gives in his chain-of-tradition. In no particular order:

- R. Shimon ben Yochai is the "baal ha-Zohar"
- He lists R. Isaac Bernays, only for some reason he calls him R. Shlomo Bernays, and is under the impression that he is the "Chacham of the Sephardim in Hamburg."
- On the last page he adds some young rabbis and scholars who are educated and making positive impressions on the youth. Among them future Chief Rabbi of Great Britain "Adler, darshan and mochiach in Hannover) and Frankel of Dresden.
- You have R. Pinchas Halevi Horowitz (Haflaah) but not a contemporary rabbi, R. Moshe Sofer, his student. But you do have R. Moshe Kunitz.
- For some reason he decided that Maimonides' father's name was Yoseph, and that Maimon was the family name.

There are several other examples of the maskilic chains of tradition. Yitzchak Baer Levinsohn included one in his Teudah Be-yisrael, and R. Samson Rafael Hirsch's uncle Moses Mendelssohn Frankfurter of Hamburg also wrote one, although it was only published in 1872, in his Pene Tevel.

Of course not. He has 3 or 4 exceptions. It's possible he thought he was Jewish, although I doubt it. It wasn't yet discovered that Avivcebron was really R. Shlomo ibn Gabirol, so I don't think he was going in that direction. More likely included him because of his importance in the Jewish philosophical tradition. On the other hand, he doesn't include Aristotle. I think he was just a quirky man, Joseph Flesch.

It was a bad time for education in many parts of the world, not just for Jews. (Dark Ages, hello.) And a very bad time for preserving written documents. There were probably a lot of educated people in that period we've never heard about because before their learning could spread, a big herd of Visigoths came charging through and used things manuscripts as torches to burn towns down along with all the manuscripts in them.

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